Long may you run: Mark Ibach 1957-2025
Mark Ibach, a good guy.
A friend to his dog is a friend to all.
My friend Mark Ibach was all that and more. Since 1981, he rescued five basset hounds. There may even have been more that we don’t know about. Mark’s Christmas cards featured a photo of him with his hounds. He brought them to the annual Chicago White Sox Dog Day. He faithfully took them to the annual mid-September Basset Bash & Waddle parade in Dwight, IL. That’s the biggest gathering of basset hounds anywhere.
Mark was the most passionate music fan I knew. He attended nearly 1,000 concerts in his lifetime and often bought two mint copies of the same album. Mark was a fierce red-headed White Sox fan and a Green Bay Packers stockholder. The fact that I’m a Cubs and Bears fan never got in our way. Love.
Mark died on May 18 from complications of lung cancer at Edward Hospital in Naperville. He was 68.
I knew Mark for 51 years. We met at the Naperville Central High School newspaper. Mark wrote a sports column he parlayed into a weekly column for the Naperville Sun called “On the Mark.”
Mark (below) and me at the Naperville Central High School newspaper.
He was a fine writer because he paid attention. His love of music shaped the rhythm of his prose. He was a fan of Chicago newspaper columnist Mike Royko and was a finalist a couple of times at the mid-1980s Royko’s Ribfest in Grant Park. He had a secret sauce recipe that was tangy with a mildly sweet finish. Mark was a loyal friend. He showed up for my parent’s funerals and my book release parties. He had a heart of gold.
We had some big times.
A couple of weeks before he passed I asked Mark to write down some of his favorite concert memories. In March 1976 the Who appeared at the Dane County Coliseum in Madison. Mark was attending the University of Wisconsin. My friend Al and I drove from Chicago to Madison to see the concert with Mark. We were busted for speeding and Mark bailed us out of jail.
“Spent all day in line at Coliseum, general admission years prior to the Cincy show,” Mark wrote, citing the 1979 Ohio concert where 11 people died in a crowd rush to get inside Riverfront Coliseum. “Really loud. Bad opener (the Steve Gibbons Band). Keith Moon in Esco Oil jumpsuit. Searched for band after the show (at the Sheraton across the street from the coliseum). You or Al ran into Entwistle. He was with a couple of girls from my dorm.” How would Mark have remembered that Moon was in an Esco Oil jumpsuit? In August 1978 Mark and I saw blues great John Lee Hooker at ChicagoFest on Navy Pier. A gentleman passed us a joint that was apparently laced with PCP. We ended up in a stupor on the CTA green line instead of the blue line.
The fine Chicago artist-writer Tony Fitzpatrick met Mark in 1980. They were employed at the new TGI Friday’s on the border of Lombard and Downers Grove. “We had other things on our minds,” Fitzpatrick said on Monday. “I was a 23-year-old bus boy and Mark was a savant about music and dogs. We’d stare at each other wearing our ridiculous striped Friday’s shirts. He was a bar back. They did back breaking work like changing kegs, bringing in cases of beer. Eventually Mark was a bartender. I could tell nothing about the job interested him in the least.”
Mark David Ibach was born at the University of Chicago hospital in Chicago and raised in Naperville. He obtained a BA in Communication Arts in 1979 from the University of Wisconsin and in 1986 he earned an MBA in Marketing from Benedictine University in Lisle. He was an insurance claims specialist for most of his adult life and had just retired in July.
Mark had plans to see the country while listening to Steve Earle, Drive By Truckers, Willie Nelson and Neil Young in the vintage teardrop trailer he purchased in 2023. He did make it to the 2024 New Orleans Jazz Fest to see the Rolling Stones and Neil Young, whom he pegged as his favorite musical artist.
For three decades, Mark was often my plus one for shows I was reviewing at the Chicago Sun-Times. In more recent years we’d visit the Arcada Theater in St. Charles to take in concerts by Johnny Rivers, Canned Heat and the odd Beatles “White Album” 2019 tour with Christopher Cross, Todd Rundgren, Mickey Dolenz and others.
“Every time I looked over my shoulder at FitzGerald’s, there was Mark,” Fitzpatrick said. “Or at the Riv. Or the Vic. I’ve never met a more inveterate music fan. And he had such great taste in music. He had a little bit of a contrarian music streak in him but in a completely agreeable way.” Mark recently teased me for going to see a Bread tribute band.
Lost in the ozone again: From L, Bill FitzGerald, Commander Cody, Mark and me after a Cody show at FitzGerald’s in Berwyn. (Photo by Mary Houlihan.)
Mark was a long-time regular at the Blue Village Vinyl record store in Westmont. “He first came here with his Packers gear,” owner Andy Derer said on Tuesday. “He said he had been a Packers fan since he was a kid. That was the beginning of a friendship. He bought a lot of Americana, Willie Nelson, J.J. Cale kind of stuff. We last saw him in December when he bought the ‘Easy Rider’ soundtrack. Sometimes we get customers that are a lot of work, refunding people if there’s a scratch or a crease in the jacket. We never had that with Mark. He was always easy going and chill. He’d walk in and you’d have a smile on your face.” Andy knew when Mark had arrived. Like something from “Back to the Future” he would appear in his beloved big yellow 1973 Buick Centurion convertible.
Mark, nephew Danny and wildlife en route to the Mississippi River in Alma, WI. (Courtesy of Darcy Ibach.)
Only in his final weeks did I learn the depth of his musical DNA. With the help of his sister Darcy Ibach, I discovered that Mark’s Great-Grandfather Peter Eustace Ibach (born 1862) was a city clerk in Alma, WI. and conducted the Froshinn Singing Society choir. The group of immigrants formed in 1885 and was the oldest German singing society in La Crosse, WI. They were unique because they operated only in German; from singing to bookkeeping. In 1985 the Froshinn Singing Society celebrated its 100th anniversary with only 13 members. By 1995 there were no members left.
Mark’s grandmother Belva Amalia Roher was born in 1895 and played organ, violin, piano and mandolin. In 1916 she attended the Oberlin (Ohio) Conservatory of Music, one of the few places in the United States that accepted women. In 1939 she was Valedictorian at University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her oration to the class was “The Influence of Music on National Life” where she said in part, “Service is the foundation of all success. The eyes of the world are upon us. Let us not disappoint them.” Mark did not disappoint.
Mark’s love of dogs was deep and profound. His hounds were Barney (the only male), Suds, Scraps and Majik, named after the late 1980s Packers quarterback Don Majkowski. Scraps enjoyed a White Castle slider every birthday and attended ten consecutive White Sox Dog Days and was featured in a Chicago Reader article.
Mark leaves behind Crumbs, who is 15. Mark wrote tender essays in each hound’s voice after they passed away. They were framed and hung on the wall of Mark’s house. Here’s Mark on Majik, who died in 1999:
“I had a hard life, my first few years. Before Mark, I had been through three families, overfed, starved, neglected, run over by a car, and fell off a two-story porch. The humane society wouldn’t even take me. They wanted to give me the needle right then and there and said I was unadoptable. As it turned out, the only reason Mark took me was because the Green Bay Packers came back from a halftime deficit to beat the Minnesota Viking and he told the person offering me the only way he’d take me was if the Packers won. Can you believe that?
“He then changed my name from Bassey to Majik, after the Packers quarterback. I loved all food and drink, and wasn’t above doing what it took to get it. I could climb on chairs and tables, open closed doors, and unlock deadbolts. Mark would call me Houdini. I liked riding in cars, not so much boats, but I loved to swim. I also liked wandering the neighborhood, be it in Downers Grove or Alma, particularly in the snow. This past summer I developed cancer. It was very painful. I had tumors removed but they grew back. Eventually, the tumors spread to my front left leg and I could no longer walk. I had a great 10 year run with Mark. Now it was time for the needle.
“Goodbye everybody, Majik.”
Saving that hound dog tells you all the world about my friend.
Mark and Crumbs karaoke night at Miss Kitty’s in Naperville a couple years ago (D. Hoekstra photo.)
I visited Mark several times when he was at school in Madison.
Mark lit up when I recently reminded him of seeing the Buzz Gunderson Band on campus in the mid-1970s. The pre-Americana-roots band was named after a character in “Rebel Without a Cause.” Buzz Gunderson was popular at the Church Key, a tavern that morphed out of the century-old Luther Memorial Chapter in Madison. The core of the band consisted of brothers Frank and Pete Anderson and Phil Davis. They were University of Wisconsin students.
In 2012 the trio joined up with Butch Vig (Garbage, Spooner and University of Wisconsin’ 80) to release the acclaimed under-the-radar record as the Emperors of Wyoming–named after a Neil Young song.
Even as Mark faced a terminal illness I saw how he stayed in the moment. He was still railing on politics and Jerry Reinsdorf from his hospital bed. We shared admiration for current New York Knicks coash and former Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau who was known to say that “you run your own race.”
Mark (L) and Danny 2014. Danny enjoyed Mark recruiting him for fun projects. (Courtesy of Darcy Ibach).
On March 22 I was called off the bench when Burton Cummings was in concert at the Rialto Square Theatre in Joliet. Mark had purchased two tickets but he was in the hospital. He had talked his doctor and nurses into a temporary release so he could attend the show. His friend Barry Thornton planned to transport Mark in a wheel chair and his family brought a change of clothes for his night out. However, the idea was nixed when a surgery was moved up. Mark gave me his ticket.
Mark visiting his mom with his newly purchased trailer in 2023. (Courtesy of Darcy Ibach.)
The final concert we saw together was the Outlaw Music Festival Sept. 7 in suburban Tinley Park. Mark was already slowing down. Mellencamp, Dylan and then Willie Nelson closed the show. Willie sat stage center and delivered a stunningly wounded cover of Tom Waits’ “Last Leaf on the Tree.” Willie sang, “…If they cut down this tree, I’ll show up in a song…” That was one of the last songs we would hear. I drove Mark home. There was no stopping at bars or the taco joints he loved.
Autumn was in the air.
Mark was a pure soul. He loved to take pictures of his friends, his family and his dogs. He was not on social media. His photos were not about likes and shares. They were pieces of a happy puzzle. When Mark showed me his new trailer photographs were all over the place. They would travel with him. Now those images will travel with me.
When Mark was one year old the family moved to Naperville. His father Paul was in-house assistant general counsel for International Shriners Hospital and a huge Chicago Bulls and Packers fan. He died in 2005. “My dad had a bunch of records when I was growing up,” Mark told me a couple of weeks ago. “33’s from the ‘50s and ‘60s and a reel-to-reel tape player. When he was working on the house on the weekend he would record his favorite stuff on the reel-to-reel and play it. If he was doing outside painting he had speakers in the garage. Mitch Miller. ‘Yellow Rose of Texas.’ He loved to play Roger Miller and that was great. I always appreciated music.” Mark became a full force spirit.
Naperville Sun, mid-1970s.
Mark’s mother Ruth Ann graduated from National Louis University with a bachelor’s degree in teaching.
She taught in Madison and Naperville and deployed her sewing skills to make costumes for Naperville Central high school plays. Ruth Ann and Paul were married 50 years.
They were season ticket holders to University of Wisconsin football games–just like Mark, her brother, her grandson Danny Suhadolnik, her mother-in-law and her brother-in law. Ruth Ann passed away on May 26, 2023 at the age of 90.
Mr. and Mrs. Ibach’s 50th wedding anniversary in July 2005, from L: Paula, Drew, Darcy, Mark, Ruth Ann and Paul. (From Mark’s collection.)
His parents are interred in Alma, WI., a beautiful village on the banks of the Mississippi River about 50 miles north of La Crosse. In 1897 Great-Grandfather Peter built a clapboard Queen Ann house overlooking the river. Mark loved that five-bedroom house that is on the National and State Register of Historic Places. I attended Ruth Ann’s funeral in Alma where Mark read a touching prose poem. At the gravesite I was in charge of Crumbs, whom I got to know better as Mark was no longer able to live in his house.
Fitzpatrick recalled, “Years ago, when I lost my beloved, ornery Chooch, Mark talked to me about what dogs meant to him. He had those basset hounds for years. He said dogs are here to make us better people. They’re here to make us closer to good. At first, I thought he said, ‘Closer to God,’ but he said ‘Closer to Good.’ That may be the smartest thing I’ve heard anybody say about dogs. I never knew a better guy. Mark was always the first guy at the party and the last guy to leave. And he had the best collection of Hawaiian shirts of anyone I knew.”
Mark’s life was filled with adventure and enthusiasm. He waited for every encore. He lived life on his own terms. I saw him befriend a nefarious guy with fresh wounds from a knife fight whom we met at a Dec. 1981 J. Geils Band concert that was the final show at the Uptown Theater in Chicago. It didn’t bother Mark to wear his leather Packers jacket at a crowded Soldier Field. In a world that leans into convention, Mark was a rugged individual. He heard music everywhere. He understood the underdogs of all stripes.
That is why he was my friend.
Besides his sister Darcy and her husband Bill Suhadolnik, Mark is survived by his sister Paula, his brother Drew (Elisabet), and nephews Danny Suhadolnik and Christopher Stoddard.
Donations in Mark’s memory can be made to Guardian Angel Basset Rescue, 108 E. Main St., Dwight, IL. 60420-1320. Mark is moving on to the next plane in a Packers- inspired green and gold urn. A memorial service is planned for this summer.
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